RP Antag and Objective Changes/Ideas

[nefarious6th]

Hello and welcome to the RP discussion emporium!

This thread has changed a little after some meaningful discussion in the Discord channel for RP.

We've been bouncing the idea of changing/tailoring RP antag objectives a little better for just that: RP; this is an ongoing conversation but one that comes up a not-insignificant number of times in Discord. So! Consider this the repository for all of our thoughts on antag objectives we'd like to see changed, axed, specified, or added!

But we've also come across the idea that it might be worthwhile to review antag mechanics on the whole, as well as non-antag RP objectives. In particular, the idea of stationwide objectives came up, and I'd like to document thoughts on that here as well.

Previous thread from Bartimeus on adding more conspirator objectives: https://forum.ss13.co/showthread.php?tid=15033

Previous thread by Emily on stationwide RP objectives TBA

I'll also keep a little doc going with the specific ideas and will edit this later to include that.

Cheers!


Small update, but "hijack" objectives were (hopefully) disabled on RP.

[Bartimeus]

I love a thread like this!

I agree that the "get this many kills or you redtext" objectives are a bit unfit for RP. Usually you need around 6 to 7 kills to "win" but that idea doesnt work when you have been rping with someone for so long just to kill them and create an interesting narrative. Maybe the amount of kills should be lowered or removed entirely?
Additionnaly the 'escape alone' objective is simply undoable without commiting mass murder which is something that is extremely hard to justify in RP. Talking from experience, i once tried to do this objective as a scientist, strapped a TTV to myself, made threats for a good 20 minutes about how either I escaped alone or everyone dies, which ended up backfiring when the crew boarded anyways, completely disregarding the warnings. This specific objective is incredibly hard to justify in an RP scenario in my opinion.

As for fun ideas, ill try to lay out a few down here, separated by categories;
(Just a note, im only putting up 'mandatory' objectives, not RP objectives)

Changelings

Changelings are alot of fun, but their only objectives are 'Kill X amount of people' and 'survive', which DOES mean you can kind of do whatever but also gives you a hard capped number of kills to reach to succeed.
I think that the 'Kill X amount' should be lowered and not be guaranteed every time.
Why not add the 'Kill John schmoe and assimilate him' that traitors have? You could approach John in a variety of ways to finally score the kill.
How about a 'Create X living limbs/buttcrabs/eyes'? Its easy to keep track of AND gives an incentive to revive dead players so they can have some fun of their own!
What about 'Assume John schmoe's identity and out him as an impostor without killing him'? Perfectly doable with the transforming sting, turn him into someone else, knock him out, steal his id, scream bloody murder! Its only one way to do it though.

Vampires

Vampire is a pretty hard traitor role compared to the others, and their only objectives are to steal enough blood and survive.
What about the same thing as 'Kill John schmoe' once again? It fits the theme i believe to have a target that has "tasty blood" or something similar.
How about 'Have 1/2 thralls alive by the end of shift'? Incites you to go for one or two kills but also to revive them, which lets them stay in the game and have some fun!

Conspirators

I actually created a thread to round up conspiration ideas, but it didnt quite catch on, i still think that there's a lot of freedom with what can be achieved with a coordinated team so the possibilites here are infinite.

Traitors/Spies

I personnally think that traitor objectives are just fine; Steal X, kill Y, protect Z are fine objectives that dont restrain you too much (even though the 'protect' objectives are kind of out of your control most of the time).
How about an 'abduction' objective, one where you have to kidnap a crewmate for some reason without actually killing them. The problem here is to figure out a way the game would count the objective as fullfilled.

Those are what i got for now, ill give it some more thought.

[Wisecrack34]

How about an 'abduction' objective, one where you have to kidnap a crew mate for some reason without actually killing them. The problem here is to figure out a way the game would count the objective as fulfilled.

How about you have to bring a person alive to a Syndicate pickup for surprise recruitment? They don't actually become a syndie but are instead dragged off, locked in a crate and mailed off to evil brainwash bootcamp.

Another option could be that the person is secretly a sleeper agent that you have to make sure arrives at cent comm safely while performing a secondary objective on the station such as sending the syndicate a macguffin via cargo or destroying a macguffin to aid the cause. Forces you to act in nefarious ways while preventing that person from being harmed.

[Bartimeus]

I like the idea of putting a guy into a crate then mailing him to brazil, but that's kind of the same as killing him, isnt it?
I do like your idea however i bringing an incapacitated person to a pickup spot. How about the game takes it as a win if you are agressively holding that person while they are incapacitated/cuffed while in the pickup spot? The problem being what to do with them at that point. I dont think that you should convert them to the syndicate as that would likely bring a new tide of grief, but doing 'something' with them for flavor points could be fun.

[nefarious6th]

...What about 'Assume John schmoe's identity and out him as an impostor without killing him'? Perfectly doable with the transforming sting, turn him into someone else, knock him out, steal his id, scream bloody murder! Its only one way to do it though.

Obviously this is meant as an "everyone's-thread" kind of thing, but I personally really, really like this idea a ton. And it leads to a whole bunch of new opportunities to explore some of the less-used changeling plays, so I'm all for it. 

Emphasis on limbcritters and thralls is nice too. I think my only concern/line of inquiry I have is that would a limbcritter objective then encourage changelings to bump people out of the hive and into limbcritters versus having them ride along? I don't know how signifcant that is on RP, since I haven't been assimilated into a hivemind, but I'd be curious to learn from anyone who plays changeling/gets eaten by changelings more frequently if that's an experience that tends to be like a limited version of spectating, or something a little more co-op with granting control to hivemind members here and there? If it's the second, do you think people would miss out on those opportunities if they had to be turned into critters instead? Do people treat critters nicely enough on RP that being a critter would be a tenable option for players? I have a lot of questions, only because I don't play as changelings or critters often! 

I mostly agree with traitor in that you get the most leeway to slap together whatever gimmick you want and you get your pick of the tools for the job. 

Feel free to re-share or link the conspirator thread, and I can add it to the main post! I didn't do enough backscroll to see it, and that's on me, so apologies for that. I'd be down for a greater number of objectives, especially since admins in the Discord bounced the idea of maybe making the gamemode more frequent; I'd like as many different conspirator adventures to come out of RP as possible! 

Thank you so much for sharing; I think there's definitely something novel to work with on the "identity theft" changeling idea for sure! :+)

[Bartimeus]

As per your request, the dead thread:
https://forum.ss13.co/showthread.php?tid=15033

[aft2001]

As a tangential but still potentially helpful idea, how about letting antags choose their objectives? They're given a short list of a few objectives and can pick at least one or more or all of them to accomplish. They're allowed one re-roll if they do not like the objectives. There should of course be a note saying that objectives don't *need* to be followed, this is just if the antag wants something specific to work towards.

[Bartimeus]

That's a brilliant idea! One free reroll!

[Ion Mage]

I mentioned this before and I'll mention it again; perhaps 'Objectives' should be renamed 'suggestions'? Most experienced players ignore objectives anyways, and having 'hard' objectives may give newer players the wrong impression regarding how much creative freedom they have.

[Varali]

Off the top of my head, get rid of the "hijack shuttle" objective for RP. It sucks for the antag, it sucks for the crew and it rarely if ever leads to any meaningful roleplay.

As for roleplay oriented objectives, give them a target that they have to convince to leave Nanotrasen and escort them to the shuttle for a Syndicate recruitment/interrogation? More subterfuge, propaganda, undermining Nanotrasen type objectives in general sounds fun.

[nefarious6th]

Just wanted to bump in here and say I caught up on ideas. I think it's good to note we're all a little meh on the "hijack emergency shuttle" objective. I'd be curious if anyone can think of why it might need to exist. I'd also be down to look at what aft was talking about; I think if there's a way to group objectives up together then there might also be a way to modify the chance at which they occur? And if that were the case, I'd wonder if we'd still be okay with "hijack" objectives if we knew they were some type of very rare roll? Or they can go completely!

Maybe changing wording to be "suggestions" is also fruitful in encouraging thinking more along the lines of "I can do this, or I don't have to, but if I make this a goal, let me think up a little story of how I'm going to get to that point..."

[Rilor]

I had an idea where instead of hijacking the shuttle by being alone they have to get a captain level ID and a few people (might depend around 2-5 seems okay to me) to place their hand on the console to confirm that the shuttle is being re-routed (with maybe a bit of extra flavor that it either lands in a completly diffrent area or centcomm is repainted with diffrent floors and walls when hijacked), and maybe word it so its implied you have to take control of the station like overtrow the cap or become a second cap opposing the first one because i kinda like that idea

[Drewmajor11]

I think that if we had something somewhat similar to nukies but not exactly nukies on RP it could be really fun, I think in general the team based objectives can be really cool, like conspirators but if they were a bit better geared and loud with an objective besides blowing up the station. Such as taking an hostage and demanding a ransom for the syndicate or something more rp centered where they would be geared but more geared to complete an RP objective and not an round ending one. Like an strike force sent in to accomplish something specific through less violence than nukies. While nukies themselves would be a problem on RP I think an modified loud team antag could be really fun every once in a while(Like once a day or so) Where it would be a team based effort and the game wouldn't end once they completed their objective.

[nefarious6th]

I think that if we had something somewhat similar to nukies but not exactly nukies on RP it could be really fun, I think in general the team based objectives can be really cool, like conspirators but if they were a bit better geared and loud with an objective besides blowing up the station. Such as taking an hostage and demanding a ransom for the syndicate or something more rp centered where they would be geared but more geared to complete an RP objective and not an round ending one. Like an strike force sent in to accomplish something specific through less violence than nukies. While nukies themselves would be a problem on RP I think an modified loud team antag could be really fun every once in a while(Like once a day or so) Where it would be a team based effort and the game wouldn't end once they completed their objective.

I think this is a really great idea. There was some talk earlier in Discord about potentials for sorts of "stationwide" objectives to drive more RP interactions, but I think having a team-based mode like this would certainly help promote interactions in the same way as a station-wide goal. The idea is unity among crewmembers, and both ideas drive that, so I'd be down to look into something like that.

I think it's also totally fair to give a shout out to mentors too; mentors have the ability to plan and coordinate events if they want, so if you really wanted to see nukies but with a specific RP tilt and some guidance, I think it's probably okay to ask some of the mentors that frequent RP1 if they'd be interested in working on a tailored event for something like that; in the meantime while a teamfight mode is being made, or if you wanted to see more scheduled team-based modes versus waiting to try and run across the once-a-week nukies on Manta.

[ArbitraryKnapsack]

I actually really like the idea of a team-based Syndicate mode for some rounds, especially on RP. While Nuke-Ops lends itself to brutal teamfights more than RP, it's also incredibly fun when it gets adminspawned every now and then. Honestly, the best way to do it would be something like "Abduct X, Y, and Z persons/Steal the AI Core/Obtain the Unobtainium MacGuffin/Ransom the Captain" type objectives, where you have a reason for a small team of players to co-operate (similar to Conspiracy), but with a more noisy objective.

Then, there could be a real reason to use the Assualt Vessel / Listening Post as there would always be the potential for Syndies to spawn with access to traitor gear to plan nefarious plots that are more conducive to RP than just killing everything and everyone. Even if it's not the full Traitor points in gear, just giving them Syndicate Armor and a Weapon or two to accomplish the plot to kidnap the RD, Heisenbee, and the Research Logs by bringing them to the listening post and stuffing them in the Magic Syndicate Mail Locker or something for brainwashing could be a ton of fun!

Even from a sec perspective, I think it'd make for a fun round here or there where you have to deal with more organized crimes instead of the lone antags here and there.